When we put the offer in on the other house, at the same time I had found a breeder, not too too far from where the house is, who breeds the breed of dogs I have been wanting. I had been wanting a lap dog for a couple of years now, and decided on a Pappillon.
 
So anyways, to make a long story short I got in touch with the breeder, they were expecting two or three batches of puppies this summer. Yes, they would take a deposit down for one pup from the 3 batches, even though I wasn't 100% positive we'd be moving. If something happened and we couldn't take the pup, our money would be refunded. The deposit was 250.00, so I took on a few extra custom orders to fund the deposit, so I wouldn't be taking from our family budget, and sent the deposit to the breeder.
 
Well, one batch of puppies ended up being miscarried, one pup at a time, over about a week. Very sad.
 
The other girl they had bred, ended up not taking. They knew this was a possibility because it was her first time being bred and you never know what will happen.
 
So, they ended up with one litter of 3 puppies.
 
Still, the breeder  held one for me with the understanding that if our house does sell, we won't be there to pick it up until the 1st week of August, when it's about 10 weeks old.
 
So because she knows we may not even end up moving, she's held back the best puppy, so she can be sure to find it a home, OR worst case scenario, keep it as a stud for herself.
 
Here's that puppy, MY puppy:

 

 
Isn't he just SOOOOOO Cute!?!? He's exactly the coloring I had wanted. I'm so sad right now though, because I had told her that if we didn't sell, or know some solid info, by the end of this month, I would give her the ok to sell him to someone else and just refund my deposit. 
 
And here we sit, June 24th.
 
To make matters worse, that offer we put in on the house also expires at the end of this month, so now we have to ask for an extension. We keep putting it off, hoping, and hoping, that maybe, just maybe, we'll sell soon, NOW. Maybe God is waiting to the last minute and that last minute hasn't quite arrived yet?
 
I don't know.
 
Anywho, that's my whine for the day.
 
Silly thing is, I don't know what I'm most upset about right at this moment, possibly loosing that house, or my puppy.

Faith, what is it?

Well, that's not really my question. I do know what faith 'is', the hope in things yet unseen, a belief in what we can not see, etc.... but what is it to have 'true faith'? In my own life, right here, right now?

A question my husband and I discussed yesterday;

Is faith believing that God CAN move our family to the farm we have an offer in on?

Or...

Is faith believing that God WILL move our family to the farm we have an offer in on?

I'm thinking it may be the second of the two, because it's actually pretty easy to have faith that God CAN move us there. God can move mountains, God can make a donkey speak, God can part the Red Sea. But do we believe that God WILL move us there?

Again, my first immediate though is, "of course He CAN!" but that's not the question is it?

The question is, will He?

And I don't know. So how do I have faith that He WILL, if I feel a need to be humble in realising I really know nothing. I mean I do BELIEVE God has called our family to live our life on a farm, as a strong family unit, helping one another to become all that we can become, in Jesus. But who am I to say He has called us to this one particular property? Who am I to even dare to ask Him to move us to that property when we have more then most already? I know it is asking a lot. I know we are blessed already.

Yet, I also know that God knows our situation. He knows that if we remain here under this burden of debt in such an expensive location, we will need to be a 2 income family, 2 full incomes. He knows that if we can sell this place, we can go back to living life as we feel He has called us to live, schooling our children, spending our days teaching them and working together as a family unit.

Yet wait... that's what we are doing now already.

So then I realise that it's not WHERE we live that dictates HOW we live because even under this huge burden of debt, even with both of us working almost every single day, we are still making it work in the way that God has called us to live our lives. As a family unit, working together, and teaching our children as we go.

So what's the problem?

I guess it's the stress of the burden that is the problem? But hasn't Jesus told us we are to leave our budens at His feet? If this is what He asks, the 'service' He provides, then the stres shouldnt' be a problem should it?

This leads me back to something the Lord tried to teach me already many years ago. Probably about 7 years ago actually. I was in church, having a moment to myself in silence and I saw a vision. A vision of myself.

In the vision, I went to the cross and nailed my burdens on that cross.

In the vision, I turned around and walked away, leaving my burdens there.

But then, in the vision, I went back to that cros with a crow bar in hand, and began prying those burdens back off that cross again.

I fear I may be prying burdens again. If stress is the problem, and Jesus has said to leave my stress, my burdens at His feet, then there really isn't any problem left is there?

Well, there's one problem, and that's me. Me and my ability to pry those burdens.

I love this photo.

This photo sums up so much of what I want out of this life.
Childlike. Color. Country. Cowgirl. Childhood. Content Happiness. Childhood Freedom. Beauty.

I haven't been so great about keeping up with daily writing here. I really don't know why. Every once in a while an idea for a journal entry will pop into my head, and then I'll forget it by the time I sit down that evening with my cup of decaf.

But, I figure I really should try harder, even if I write much ado about nothing. Hee hee! Even if for no one else, but myself.

Well first off, no, we are not moved yet and no our house has not sold, however, we have put an offer in, which has been accepted, on our possible new home!

Welcome to (Lord willing):

Finally
HOMEstead

That's the name we've chosen for our future home. I think it's quite fitting really.

For the past 18 years we've been searching for 'home', and we believe we may have Finally found it!

Continued prayers from my dear friends is MUCH appreciated.
We have one obstacle in our way, and that is getting our place sold. That's certainly no obstacle for God though. We know if this is all meant to be, everything will fall into place. In the meantime, we're keeping the faith that this IS our future home.

If it's not, Lord be with me when You tell me no. LOL
Then I'll be asking even more anxiously for prayer, to keep my sanity intact!

It's quite funny really, we almost KNOW that there's things happening behind the scenes. Too many little things for me to share that wouldn't make a whole lot of sense without going into great elaborate details, but, little things like this one incident that happened just the other day.

Our realtor works for a realstate company. The company recently had their entire website revamped. Great changes, as I found the previous site to be quite 'under-whelming' and we were not impressed with the size of photos and the limited write ups about the homes this company had for sale, including ours of course.

So the other day, I mozy (is that how you spell it?) on over to the site and notice everything has changed and the site looks great! I type in our realtors name to find her listings. Lo and behold, guess what? Our listing is missing. Our home is no where to be found.

When the site had been revamped, all our information, the entire listing, had all been deleted. I suppose they were deleting sold listings and ours just happened to get in the way of the deletion process.

In whatever the case may be, I found it quite humorous.
Throughout this entire process it's been one difficult step after another, yet with God's peace through it all, and all along I've said; "This place IS going to sell DESPITE all of this!"

I'm standing fast on that. I have to!

Tagging is a great way to network, meet new friends, and get acquainted with other bloggers!

Audra, from A Dash of Sassitude (and knowing Audra personally, in real life as well as on the net, I can safely say she has more then just a bit of Sassitude lol) has tagged me! So I'm going to be a good sport and play!

Here are the rules:

1. The rules of the game get posted at the beginning.
2. Each player answers the questions about themselves.
3. At the end of the post, the player then tags people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know they’ve been tagged and asking them to read your blog.
4. Let the person who tagged you know when you’ve posted your answer.

1 ) What I was doing 10 years ago…

Hmmmmm.... 10 years ago I had my 3rd child, lived 3000 miles away from here and happen to be moving back that way hopefully soon! I had just become a full time stay at home mom for the first time since becoming a mama.

2 ) What are five things on your to-do list for today?

• finish making wetbags
• finish 2 custom orders
• teach the kids, today we're doing calendar work!
• get outside for a bit, if it stops raining
• write a blog post (yay, I can check this off my list ha ha!)

3 ) Snacks I enjoy…

• raisins with peanuts (must be salted!)
• pretzels
• strawberries (although I like these even better as breakfast then a snack!)
• sun chips
• veggies and dip 

4 ) Five things I would do if I were a billionaire…

• pay off all debt
• buy a huge ranch, I mean HUGE for us, and then for our children in the future as each one was ready
• share some of it with those I love 
• invest it
• buy a cottage on a lake with a boat and a boat ramp

5 ) Three Bad Habits…

• procrastinate
• can be a wee impatient
• spend too much time online (what do you know, Audra and I share the same bad habits!)

6 ) 5 places I have lived…

• Holland (born there & again as a teen)
• Alberta, Canada
• Ontario, Canada
• British Columbia, Canada
• Vancouver Island, BC, Canada

7 ) 5 Jobs I have had

• Activity Co-ordinator at a nursing home for the elderly
• Nurses Aid
• Day care providor
• At a Day Care in Holland
• Waitress

I’m tagging: FarmlandFilly , and YOU! Leave a comment if you post this meme and I’ll link to you in this post.

Real life, around here anyways, truly is stranger then fiction.

I should write a book of short stories. I could call it "Animal Antics at the Funny Farm!"

I shared back a while ago about one of our cats and the lovely gift she brought me one night. I wanted to link back to that entry, but alas, I can not find it, so I'll add that story here:

Living in the country…

It’s not all romantic ya know?

Often in the evenings, I sit outside on our master bedroom balcony and look over our property, watch the horses over to the right, check out our almost finished cabin over on the left. I usually check to see if I can catch a glimmer of our hens red heat lamp through the cracks of the hen house, just to make sure it’s still on.

I have a lawn chair that I sit on out there. No matter what the weather, it’s always beautiful on the master bedroom balcony.

On clear nights you can gaze at the stars. On full moon nights, you can view the entire property in the moonlight.

Tonight, it was not a clear night and there was no moonlight.

As I sat out on the master bedroom balcony, one of our ‘barn cats’ saw me. I swear she can see/hear me come out from a mile away. As soon as I step out there she jumps up on the lower deck, then onto the lower deck railing, from there she jumps onto the eaves and makes her way to the master bedroom balcony.

She did her thing, and as usual, jumped straight up on my lap.

I sat there for a while, enjoying the misty dark view, petting her and talking to her.

Suddenly she picked something up off my lap and jumped down.

It was a dead mouse.

EWWWWWWwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww…………

Some how, it kind of spoiled the mood and I high tailed it back into the house.

Stupid cat.

Anywho...

Fast forward to the other night. I open the door to go out onto the masterbedroom balcony, and as per usual, Serefina, my 10 year old dd's cat, who LOVES to bring me gifts, immediately sprang to life and headed my way from the lower deck. She jumped up onto the railing of the deck below and sure enough, I see something hanging from her mouth. Yet another gift. Isn't she sweet?

However, this time it was not a little mouse that could go unnoticed on my lap. This time it was something BIG! The night sky was dark though, so I couldn't see WHAT it was! There was a towel on the deck chair, so I grabbed that and started 'shoo-ing' her away, frantically. She didn't care! She was determined that she was going to bring me this gift whether I liked it or not! By this time she had already jumped up on our eaves and was coming across to me, she was only a few feet away! ACK! I still couldn't see what this thing was that she had hanging from her mouth. All I could tell was that it was almsot half the size of her! YUCK!

A thousand thoughts were racing through my mind!
"what could it be?"
"was it a huge rat!?!??"
"WHAT DO I DO!?!?!"

I grabbed a glass of water, and threw the water at her! She STILL wouldn't stop.

By this time, she's getting ready to jump from the eave onto the deck where I'm standing. I could tell that what she had was a bunny. A young bunny. So now I'm still thinking a thousand thoughts a second.
"Do I run into the house?!"
"What if it's still alive and it needs my help?!"

We had another cat that did this once, years ago, at another house. She had caught a tiny baby bunny and also brought it onto our deck of that current home! What is it with these cats?! That baby bunny was still alive and when she set it down, it started to run around and fell off the deck. We were able to rescue it, and we took it the next day to the wild life recovery center. So of course this memory is flashing through my mind as I'm standing on this deck with this demented cat headed towards me with great determination, and a floppy bunny hanging from her mouth!

So I'm thinking what if I don't run into the house, and she drops the rabbit and it starts running madly on this deck!? The deck is only 8x6 feet, so it's not like I can get away from it. LOL Not that I'm normally scared of bunnies mind you, but in this situation, by this point, I was feeling just a wee bit uptight and freaked out. LOL

She jumps onto the deck, with me still frantically trying to "shoo" her away with my towel. I have no weapon, nothing to fight off this cat, or rabbit, with. lol She drops the rabbit under the deck chair, and I stop, my heart beating a thousand beats a minute, waiting, watching. The bunny must be dead. It doesn't move.

So now my fear turns into anger. Stupid stupid cat! She was a stupid cat last time, but this time, she is a Stupid STUPID cat! I may have called her a friggin cat too. I can't remember. She just needs to be glad I didn't call her a lot worse then that.

So that was my animal antic from the other night.

Then, fast forward to today...

Everyone was out this afternoon running errands except for one of my 8yo twins and my 10yo. They where home with me. They had been writing stories and coloring near by. The 10yo went down stairs to get something, and quickly called for her sister.

Somehow, her sister's snake had gotten out of it's container!
Mind you, the container had a piece of plastic wrap draped on top of it, to keep the snake in.

Hmmmmm... how on earth did a snake escape?!! He must be a very smart snake to be able to slither out from under a piece of plastic wrap draped over his container... Imagine that?!

So now, we have a snake loose in our house. Great! Just what a mama LOVES to hear! Doesn't every mama want to hear that there's a snake loose in the house? I mean it's not like it could 'dissapear' right?

Thankfully, I'm a pretty laid back mama so I didn't panic. I did however, have a few visions fly through my mind. A snake in my couch was one, a snake in the cupboard and food was another. However, I couldn't have imagined where we would have found him.

Guess.

Where would a snake go, if it escaped a container, insde a house?

Well I bet you wouldn't think to check your DISHWASHER now would you?

Nope! I didn't think to check there either. But yep, that's where he was!

Just another day at the funny farm. If this isn't the funny farm, I'm sure to be headed there soon! Where ever it may be!